The present invention relates to an apparatus for conveying containers having non circular cross section.
In particular, the present invention finds application in bottling lines operating on bottles with substantially square cross section.
The apparatus also finds specific but not exclusive application at the input of a labeling machine.
The presence of multi-line conveyors and the need in any case to have ultimately a single flow into the machine (e.g. labeling machine) which has to operate a treatment on the containers, requires the availability of considerable space in plants to allow the reduction from multiple flows to a single flow.
It would therefore be desirable to find a solution that enables to merge the flows within a smaller space.
An additional problems encountered in the prior art is that, when operating on containers whose cross section is not circular but for instance square (i.e. containers for which the orientation and positioning during conveyance is fundamental, above all for the labeling step) there can be problems with the imperfect orientation of the containers, with consequent erroneous positioning of the label thereon.
If star conveyors interacting with each other and counter-rotating were used to merge multiple flows into a single flow of containers, there would be the problem of the shape of the counter-guide, which could not extend too much towards a star conveyor without interfering with the flow of the containers coming from the other one.
The containers would thus be guided only partially and this, when containers with square cross section are involved, for which a correct orientation is essential, is unacceptable, above all when using high conveyance speeds.